REVIEW: Ghosts of West Hollywood at The Etcetera Theatre 2 – 7 June 2026
‘reveals the complicated relationship between self and performer’ ★★★
California dreaming inevitably always all goes wrong. Film and stage actor Tino Orsini, turned playwright, teaches us a painful lesson on the price of following your dreams. Fed up with trying to insert himself forcefully in performance history, Orsini in ‘Ghosts of West Hollywood’, interrogates a personal journey from Southern Italy, the UK and US, through addiction, extras in film roles, or the HIV epidemic that exploded for the queer community throughout the late 19th century.
Orsini has worked up one hell of a script. A recipe brewed through lived experience, heartache and the varied roles which he has performed. His acting career began at school with roles in Arthur Miller’s ‘A View from a Bridge’, then on to The Stella Adler Conservatoire in California and the Drama Studio in London. Making his film debut in the critically acclaimed ‘The Make of … And God Spoke’, the writing of his solo show combines cinematic film techniques with a careful, soft dialogue, which at its best immediately unites audience and performer.
Orsini plays himself without the stereotypical, performative airs of an actor playing themselves and just tries to be honest. He trails back to this same question again and again. What does it mean to be yourself, have a personality or one stable identity, in a world that relies upon illusion? He, rather characteristically, never gives us a straight answer, revealing the complicated relationship between self and performer. A story he tells through personal anecdote, avoiding an academic or symbolic interpretation which no one needs any more of.
The set is simple: carboard boxes stage right; headshots scattered around as temple like packages of bohemian life; a projection of Californian bedroom lingers on the wall behind him; a fake plant, impossibly green and endlessly symbolic of the life he was chasing in the US. It’s just the kind of simplicity one wants in a pub theatre.
The piece does, however, need its director. A proverbial statement for those wishing to run a solo show in London. On occasion, Orsini descends into a monotony in speech and movement that could easily be tweaked by a trained, observational eye. He could at times move, in similar patterns across the stage which considering the international, time bending nature of this work, displays too openly, the mechanics of the work. It was all too easy to spot the places he would perch to move the narrative forwards.
The Etcetera Theatre lightbox was put to good use. One scene saw Orsini dancing in a nightclub with rather believable lighting and the reviewer appreciated a man of his age getting his groove on. A projector in the background also highlighted movements between place and time with great success, marking abstract movements back through family history and movements forward through his life story.
Overall, Orsini’s script his all the right verbal notes with an eloquence that worked through accents, language and emotional intentions. Though, the play needed that final eye and discerning judgement, heightening the pieces that worked and doing away with what is left.
BOX OFFICE https://www.etceteratheatrecamden.com/events/ghosts-of-west-hollywood-agzk5-dhsec
